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Santa Monica, CA -- On Friday, September 28 the California State Park and Recreation Commission voted unanimously to rename Eastshore State Park as McLaughlin Eastshore State Park in honor of San Francisco Bay champion Sylvia McLaughlin.

Citizens for East Shore Parks, the nonprofit organization instrumental in establishing the Eastshore State Park, spearheaded the campaign to rename the park after Sylvia McLaughlin.

McLaughlin, the Sierra Club, and CESP led the charge to create Eastshore State Park, which runs 8.5 miles along the East Bay shoreline. The Park was established on December 6, 2002.

Sylvia McLaughlin, a Berkeley resident now in her ninth decade, is the co-founder of CESP and Save San Francisco Bay Association (Save the Bay). Thanks to McLaughlin and hundreds of other activists, San Francisco Bay is now 40,000 acres larger than it was in 1961. More than half of it is ringed with public trails connecting a series of shoreline parks. An environmental activist all her life - Sylvia also helped establish the Bay Conservation and Development Commission the first coastal protection agency in the U.S. and climbed a tree at the age of 90 in an effort to save a grove of oaks from a proposed UC development.